The scope and structure of a portfolio should always begin first with a plan. In order to know where you want to go you need to figure out where you want to end up and then work backwards. I believe this strategy should be used in all aspects of life, not just investing. In simple terms, you need a goal.

Most people have no goal in mind or know where they want to end up, and if they do have a goal they give very little thought on how to get there or the potential road blocks that may occur along the way (something that I try to help with here). I cannot tell you what your goals should be because you could be someone that is in their early 60's with $2 million saved for retirement, or you could be someone in your mid 20's with $15,000 saved for retirement, and the ultimate desired finishing point for each person could be starkly different.

Therefore, I have to talk in generalities when discussing actual investments, and you always need to speak with both a professional financial advisor and a tax specialist before making any investment decisions.

We live in a world today where almost everything feels overvalued. The dangers in the global economy and financial markets have been masked by the temporary illusion of artificially low interest rates. Investors have once again become drunk on liquidity and credit. There is a belief now that even if something goes wrong that the central banks can immediately "fix" the situation. This simple and incorrect assumption, when it is proven to be false, will trigger a massive dislocation across all assets.

During periods of severe complacency to borderline euphoria the first and foremost strategy is capital preservation. This means that you want your capital out of harms way when the euphoria fades. Markets have a tendency to climb slowly over long periods, pulling as many people as possible into the madness of the crowd, before reversing quickly and crushing those caught off guard.

In very general terms, around the world I would avoid these assets:

Most Real Estate
Most Bonds
Most Stocks

99.9% of investment advisors tell you that you should have 100% of your investments in a diversified portfolio composed of these three asset classes. Maybe you own a $200,000 home and have your 401k, which contains $400,000, in a "retire in 2035" fund." That fund may contain 50% bonds and 50% stocks to give you $200,000 (33%) in real estate, $200,000 (33%) in stock mutual funds, and $200,000 in bonds. This is a dream portfolio for most advisors.

If someone I knew was in the situation above and asked me what percentage I thought they should have in each of the three categories, it would be 0% in all three. Based on where they lived in the world, the economic environment, the supply/demand statistics, and the rent/own data I would most likely tell them to sell their home. The 401k situation becomes a bit more difficult and needs careful consideration. Some 401k plans allow you to move money over to an IRA type fund where you can invest in whatever you like (which occurs automatically if you ever decide to change jobs). If you cannot move your funds you must decide if you should sell and incur the taxes and penalties or if you should try and locate the safest possible fund type within your options. I cannot give advise on how to proceed there, only let you know that if you are in a "retire in 20XX" fund you are most likely in the maximum amount of danger.

The safest possible fund in a 401k would be one that has a description like "prime money market fund" that has treasury bills or investments with very short term maturities as its primary holding. The return on this fund will be close to 0% annually.

Let's now look at a strategy if you have freedom outside of a 401k.

After you have your final investment goal in mind, we can now look at strategies on how to get there. The first thing you want to do is remove as much risk as possible from your portfolio (the assets listed above). Then you want to make sure you have cash available when buying opportunities emerge.

"Safe cash" would be a fund that invests only in short term t-bills rolling about every 3 to 6 months (or less). The best fund I know available for this strategy is the American Century Capital Preservation Fund. This type of fund will protect you on interest rate risk (the bonds can just be rolled over at a higher yield), but while you wait you will earn close to 0% on your money. There is a price to pay for safety, the short term return you miss out by not investing in longer dated, higher yielding bonds or stocks, that I believe will be well rewarded as we move through this storm.

The second part of protecting your portfolio is through the purchase of physical precious metals: gold and silver. I believe you should start your investment in this area with physical coins in your possession that you can either keep at home or in a safety deposit box. My favorite option to purchase physical coins is through the Northwest Territorial Mint. When you feel comfortable with your initial physical ownership then you can begin to accumulate metals through services that will store physical metals for you. My favorite option for this is through Goldmoney, which allows you to purchase physical metals electronically and then store them in different vaults around the world. You can then sell them at any point and have the funds transferred back to you or you can request physical delivery of your metals. I will provide a link to goldmoney at the bottom of this page.

Your "safe cash" and "precious metals" part of your portfolio should make up the lion's share of your total investments based on the current economic environment. How much of your portfolio should be allocated to metals? It depends on your personal situation, but I would recommend that everyone have at least 10% of their total net worth in precious metals to start, which can be considered an insurance policy.

Now that you have your assets protected you want to make a list of investments you can purchase when they go on "sale." You determine this list first by getting an idea of what assets you believe are in long term secular bull markets and have long term positive fundamentals. For example, my list looks like this:

I check in with these asset groups and specific stocks/ETFs within each group every day. I recommend you create your own list and when an asset goes on sale, which usually coincides with a massive drop off in sentiment, it will create a buying opportunity and the ability to exchange some of your safe cash for that asset.

For example, which asset or assets on my list currently have the two most important determinants I need before making the purchase?

1. The price has recently fallen and the asset has gone on sale
2. Sentiment toward the asset is at extremely low levels

The only two on my list as I write this morning are gold mining shares and rare earth stocks. Right now gold mining shares are hated by by investors who do not like gold, and they are disliked by investors that do like gold. They have performed miserably over the last three years. As gold has recently risen, gold shares have fallen by 30%. The fundamentals are fantastic, the prices are low, and the sentiment is a rock bottom. I love them. Rare earth stocks currently share the same traits.

Once you have determined that an asset group is on sale then you need to dig a little deeper to determine the best possible investment options within that category. In order to do this I use the service of professionals that study that specific category on a full time basis (I don't have the time or ego to think I can personally track the fundamentals or management of every individual stock on the planet nor would I ever want to).

For gold stocks I subscribe to John Doody's Gold Stock Analyst newsletter. If you are thinking about making a purchase in this area I would recommend using his excellent research. I also invest in the Tocqueville Gold Fund managed by John Hathaway. These two men have decades of experience tracking gold stocks. I wait for stocks to go on sale and then I invest in their specific recommendations.

For rare earth stocks I use the services of James Dines and his monthly Dines Letter, which has been tracking the market and the participants within the rare earth industry for over a decade. His newsletter provides a monthly analysis of the top rare earth stocks and the story behind each choice.

I'm not recommending that you invest in gold mining shares or use any of the services just discussed, I'm only trying to walk you through the process I use for investing.

Gold stocks could be a bad investment for me personally this afternoon or tomorrow (prices and sentiment rise), and another asset on the list could become a buying opportunity (prices and sentiment fall).

If oil were to go on sale and sentiment were to plunge, I would then use the resources of a specialist in that field to determine the best stocks to purchase within that asset class. The same with agriculture or water or Chinese stocks.

I used the example in the previous section of this outlook of how I felt Chinese shares went on sale a few months ago and I recommended readers look at it as a buying opportunity. The shares since then are up close to 20%, sentiment is rising, and investors are starting to pay attention to their market again. Do I want to purchase shares now?Definitely not. If prices crash again and sentiment falls then I'll make another purchase. If they don't then I'll just hold on to my shares.

It is important to note that buying when prices fall and sentiment is low sounds easy at first blush, but it is pyschologically one of the most difficult things for an investor to do. People move subconsciously in a herd behavior and if you are not focused on it every day you will automatically begin to drift mentally back in line with the herd.

I can't tell you what I will purchase (or not purchase) this afternoon or tomorrow because I don't know where prices or sentiment will be. Maybe silver prices will crash tomorrow and everyone will hate silver. That would be amazing. I would be buying with both hands. Over time, if you make strong purchases within an asset class that has long term positive fundamentals, if you buy when everyone is afraid and hold when everyone is euphoric, then you will be rewarded in full.

People get upset when their favorite assets fall in price. I cannot figure out why. Their reaction should be the exact opposite. Would you get upset if the television or computer you wanted to buy went on sale? Your portfolio should be prepared (with the safe cash just discussed above) for market sell offs and they should be greeted with a welcome smile.

I will continue to update you as we move forward when specific asset groups have gone on sale and sentiment has reached levels that I believe warrant an investment.

Let me re-state that 99.9% of financial advisors you speak with tell you to do the exact opposite of what I am recommending here. I fully understand that, and you need to take that into consideration before making any investment decisions.

I don't know if the coming change, the paradigm shift, discussed in this outlook will occur in 2013, 2014, or 2015, but I know that it is coming. I really don't care when it occurs. I have my plan on where I would like to end up and I have my vision on how the world will change as I move toward that destination. I work relentlessly every day to prepare myself to be ready to invest in asset classes that will be on sale in this future world, after the dislocation has occurred.

I will elaborate on my personal preparation more in the future, and the opportunities that will emerge after the coming shift in interest rates, but that is looking further ahead than the scope of this outlook.

For more information on getting started with goldmoney, where you can open an account in just a few minutes, click on the following link:

I try to spend time reading a very wide range thoughts from intelligent and respectable analysts on the financial markets. I also try to take the time to study every argument with an opinion from both sides. Einstein once said that "the test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."

This may sound silly at first, but I assure you it is far more difficult to accomplish than it appears. The natural human instinct is to seek out information that confirms what you already believe, instead of seeking out information that argues against it. This is why you find people that come to a conclusion and put out a forecast only read authors that agree with that forecast. It is always my goal to do the exact opposite. I want to have as much information as possible in my head competing for the final analysis.

I say this now because many of the people that turned bearish on stocks in late 2008 and early 2009 and have remained bearish on stocks over the last few years have now thrown in the towel. They haven given up and either recommended to investors that they purchase stocks or they are now purchasing stocks for their own clients. It is now a consensus across the board (as I will show in a moment) on the following bullet points that outline the bullish view:

*The trend is up, the technical charts look strong ("don't fight the trend")*The Fed will always keep the market moving higher ("don't fight the Fed")*Where else will investors put their money to get a good return?*The public investor has been out of the market providing money on the sidelines

All these points are valid and worthy of discussion, and I will go through each below.

Many of the analysts that recommended shorting stocks in 2009 now enter 2013 with the belief that we have begun a new long term bull market, after the market has risen well over 100% in price.

I have been bearish on US stocks since the start of 2010 when they crossed about 10,500 on the DOW. At that point I felt both owning US stocks or purchasing new shares did not provide enough margin of safety based on what I felt was the true strength of the economy. I recommended to investors who I help manage money that they sell stocks and put that money into "safe cash." (I will discuss safe cash in a coming section).

At certain points over the last three years I have determined points of extreme euphoria in the market and documented them here on the site (see Inside The Mind Of A Tuna: How I Invest & Why). I let investors know that it would be a good time to apply a short position in the market (with speculative money) and then close that short position when stocks fell and the euphoria passed. This has provided short term profit opportunities while we watched stock prices run and run and run higher sitting in cash.

Today, 3 long years later and over 3,500 points higher on the DOW (which just crossed back over 14,000 this week), I fully understand that both I and the people I help invest have "missed" this portion of the run. Along the way the safe cash continues to be steadily deployed into other assets when buying opportunities emerge, which have outperformed the general US market. As a recent example see China's Stock Market Continues To Plunge: Buying Opportunity? (China's market is up close to 20% since that publication).

In the media and the online world of finance, everyone that was in agreement with me in early 2010, all those that were cautious on the US stock market and sitting on the sidelines, have now left. So they question is, do I think this is a good opportunity to join them and put money into the US stock market?

The answer is no. I am now more bearish than I have ever been.

Before we move on to how the scope of this outlook, how the major paradigm shift in interest rates will impact this specific asset class, let me quickly review the current state of euphoria in the stock market today. I believe sentiment is the second most important tool an investor can use to make an investment decision (after price/value calculations). For more on why that is, I always recommend investors briefly review the discussion in 2012 Real Estate Outlook: The Fall.

To get things started we have this week's cover of Barron's magazine which provides, without words, the jubilance in the air.

As a reminder, here was the cover on March 9, 2009 (the week that stocks bottomed). The mood was beyond dour.

The NAAIM manager survey is a two week moving average of the responses from fund managers on how they are positioned in the market today. Due to their ability to leverage their positions through debt, managers have the ability to move over 100% of their capital into the market in one direction or the other. For example the range of responses can move from:

200% leveraged short all the way to 200% leveraged long (-200% to +200%)

The most recent response (shown in the green line below) came in at 104% long, a new record long position in the survey.

This means that fund managers have moved beyond putting 100% of their investment capital into the stock market.

It is the equivalent of your next door neighbor putting 100% of his retirement money into the stock market, then coming over to your house and asking to borrow money so he can buy more stocks.

According to Short Side Of Long, and this number is staggering, the most bearish participant in the survey was 60% long stocks!

The next chart provides an average of a large number of sentiment indicators in the market (price, momentum, safe haven, breadth, junk bond demand, put and call options, and volatility). It shows the markets currently have the most amount of greed and the least amount of fear in the history of the survey.

Margin debt at the NYSE is now back at levels seen in May 2007. This is the amount of borrowed money used to bet stocks are going higher.

Before we move on I want to briefly remind readers what happens when investors are long with leverage and assets unexpectedly move in the opposite direction. They are forced to sell other positions on their books in order to make margin calls. This process has a self re-enforcing ability to create a waterfall type event across all assets - specifically the most liquid. This is why stocks tend to rise slowly for years, and usually have a free fall type movement over a short period of time when they reverse. A good example was seen clearly in the fall of 2008 as everyone was caught off guard and leveraged long.

The Market Vane bullish consensus has reached 69% bullish, the level last seen at previous major tops.

The investor's intelligence survey is at 52%, a two year high.

Next up we have the VIX, or the fear index. It has hit levels not seen since early 2007 meaning that investors see absolutely no risk anywhere in the market right now.

The AAII poll of individual investors has more bulls than bears than any time over the last two years.

One of the arguments above from the bullish camp is the money coming off the "sidelines" from the average investor into mutual funds. To start the year we saw the second biggest week of fund flows into the stock market ever. The first came in late 2007 at the previous market top. The first 3 weeks of the year saw a total of $14.9 billion enter the market, the largest for any period since 2001.

These gauges show that market has moved beyond cyclical points of optimism during the last few years to levels of euphoria found at the two previous major tops. Those that have been involved with the stock market for more than a few years can remember how the media and fund managers viewed the market in 2007. As unimaginable as it seems, we have moved right back into that world today.

Looking beyond sentiment one can argue that the world is a better place today than it was back in early 2009 justifying the current stock prices and valuations and much more room to run higher in the years ahead. But is that true?

The following chart shows the S&P 500 vs. consumer confidence. The US consumer has been the backbone of the economy for decades. This is why consumer confidence and the price of stocks have always tracked each other consistently. The question is, has something changed in this dynamic? No reforms were made after the previous crash to move the US economy's dependence for growth away from consumption, yet stocks and consumer confidence have recently diverged. The average American who purchases goods is saying that things are far worse than the stock market has them priced today. These points will converge again in the future, it is only a matter of where you believe that convergence will take place.

How about price to earnings valuations? David Rosenberg recently noted that the S&P 500 has traded up to a 14x P/E multiple with today's rosy earnings and expectations. Earnings per share projections are for a 10.3% year over year profit surge in quarter 3 and a 16.7% profit surge in quarter 4.

This comes at a time when profits from the fourth quarter are disappointing expectations and new tax increases, Obamacare, and the coming debt ceiling compromise are on the table for 2013. In other words, investors have priced in growth beyond perfection at a time when higher taxes could trigger a major slow down.

Can stocks move higher even if earnings stagnate or fall? Of course they can. An investor can bid any asset up to a higher level (as seen in the discussion on the prices being paid on commercial real estate buildings in the previous section). P/E levels moved to astronomical levels back in early 2000. Can they move back to those points of overvaluations again? Of course. Will I buy stocks today on the "hope" that happens again?

Nope.

What about the Fed? If there are $85 billion in freshly printed bills entering the financial system every month, that has to help stocks right? To understand why on a fundamental level that inflation does not help stock prices (in fact it directly hurts them - review charts from the 1970's) see The Dark Side Of QE: The Next Chapter In Our Story. Beyond just the fundamental principles of why QE does not help stocks, you need to also understand that investors do not have to put printed money into the US stock market. They have put a large percentage of capital into the US market up until now, but that can change at any moment. The Fed has the ability to unleash an unlimited amount of money, but they do not have the ability to determine where it goes after it is unleashed. It is like dumping water down a stream.

The Fed "hopes" that 100% of the money ends up chasing US stocks, real estate, and bonds, creating a wealth effect for consumers. However, money will go where it is treated best. That could be Chinese stocks, oil, agriculture, gold, Brazilian real estate, Canadian government bonds, or any other asset on the planet. There are no boundaries in the financial world today, and money moves and flows at the speed of light into different assets around the world.

What about the "money on the sidelines" that has been building up as the average American has exited stocks and moved into bond funds over the last 5 years? The consensus view is that this money will "rotate" back into stocks and push the market back into the stratosphere. The problem is that there is not just a big pile of money sitting somewhere. They are not in "cash" funds, they are in "bond" funds. For every buyer of an asset there must be a seller.The major reason there has been a larger increase in bond holdings over the last 5 years is that there has been a massive new supply of bonds entering the market. This has in large part been due to the enormous Federal spending programs put in place to counter the current depression.

If everyone sells bonds to buy stocks, who is going to buy the bonds that are sold? That brings us back to the final part of this discussion, which brings everything full circle back to where this outlook began.

The steady stream of new supply of debt (bonds) entering the market has been relentless, and it appears to have no signs of slowing in the years ahead. The financing for this debt has been easy so far because the government has had both the average investor looking for "safety" in bonds and the Federal Reserve's QE programs. Every bond that has entered the market has met open arms, and this process continues today.

The coming "rotation" out of bonds that everyone so desperately wants would trigger the start of the coming debt crisis. As bonds are sold, rates will rise. This will trigger problems in almost every area of the economy. We have already discussed how it will impact the real estate market. It will also raise the cost for companies to borrow money for growth. It will raise the cost for local governments to finance their debt. It will raise the cost for Americans to go further into debt to continue to purchase goods. People will not understand how much the recent years of rates falling have masked the true underlying economic problems until that process begins to move into reverse.

In addition, what would happen if some of that bond money decided not to rotate directly into stocks as everyone predicts it will. As we just discussed, money can move anywhere. A bond sold become cash. That cash could then be used to purchase oil, copper, steel, agriculture, or natural gas - essentially the underlying goods that make up the every day cost of living. Americans have not experienced a surge in employment or salary during the recent stock market surge. The income side of the American consumer's balance sheet is far worse than it was during the recent stock market high of 2007, only the debt is still there like a noose around the neck.

A rise in the cost of living today would further reduce the ability to spend on discretionary goods at a time when the ability to borrow money to buy these goods is either disappearing or becoming more costly. This creates less demand from the final consumer of the goods for the companies that make up the DOW.

Looking directly at the balance sheet of corporations, a rise in the cost of goods cuts directly into their profit margins before they even have a chance to enter the market.

During the current artificial recovery everything has worked perfectly for the Fed, which is why they are considered "god-like" in the market today. The money has gone exactly where they wanted it to; bonds and stocks, while inflation has remained very low. This has allowed them to become more and more brazen, perhaps even believing that they are god-like, announcing that they will print $85 billion every month, forever, until the unemployment rate hits 6.5%.

In reality, this period of complacency has set the global economy up for the biggest disaster in history. I hope you can now see that as we are at the dawn of this disaster, the final chapter of the 70 year debt super cycle, most investors have their all their bets pointed in the wrong direction, with leverage. This always occurs right at the moment when things change due to human psychology.

How should one be positioned at this important moment in history in order to protect their capital during the change and be prepared to take advantage when fear returns to the market. That is what we will discuss next.Before we move on I want to briefly provide you with two paragraphs from this week's Barron's magazine cover story (cover above). I hope you will now have a different perspective on the analysis. The emphasis is mine.The party is far from over. The early-year rally that on Friday took the Dow Jones Industrial Average to within 1% of its record high, set in 2007, could have a lot further to run. For starters, stocks aren't expensive. The Standard & Poor's 500 index is valued at about 14 times estimated 2013 profits and the Dow fetches less than 13 times projected 2013 earnings. At the market peak in 2007, the Dow traded for 16 times forward earnings. Given ultralow interest rates, the market multiple has room to expand even if earnings growth remains modest.

There's a huge amount of money that could shift into stocks because individuals until recently have favored bonds over equities, based on mutual-fund flow data. "If there is a great rotation going on from bonds to stocks, we may be only in the top of the first inning," says Jason Trennert, chief investment strategist at Strategas Research Partners in New York. Trennert cites the TINA -- or "there is no alternative" -- factor, as yield-starved investors move into stocks.

"We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it and stop there lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again and but she will never sit down on a cold one either."

- Mark Twain

"It's waiting that helps you as an investor, and a lot of people just can't stand to wait."

- Charlie Munger

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."

- Gandhi

"One of the best rules anybody can learn about investing is to do nothing, absolutely nothing, unless there is something to do. I just wait until there is money lying in the corner, and all I have to do is go over there and pick it up. I wait for a situation that is like the proverbial shooting fish in a barrel."

- Jim Rogers

"Capitalism without financial failure is not capitalism at all, but a kind of socialism for the rich."

- James Grant

"At this juncture, the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained."

- Ben Bernanke, March 2007

"Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again."

- Andre Gide

"When people are getting richer and richer but they're not actually producing anything, it can't end well."

- Louis CK

"In economics things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could."

- Rudiger Dornbusch

"I don't write about what I know. I write to find out what I know."

- Patricia Hampl

"Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken."

- Warren Buffett

"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."

- Mike Tyson

"Interest on the debt grows without rain."

- Yiddish Proverb

"You can have comfort, or you can have value. You cannot have both."

- Jim Grant

"Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies. And if they insist on trying to time their participation in equities, they should try to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful."

- Warren Buffett

"No very deep knowledge of economics is usually needed for grasping the immediate effects of a measure; but the task of economics is to foretell the remoter effects, and so to allow us to avoid such acts as attempt to remedy a present ill by sowing the seeds of a much greater ill for the future."

- Ludwig von Mises

"Men who can both be right and sit tight are uncommon."

- Jesse Livermore

There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.

-Ludwig von Mises

"Most investors think quality, as opposed to price, is the determinant of whether something's risky. But high quality assets can be risky, and low quality assets can be safe. It's just a matter of the price paid for them."

- Howard Marks

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."

-Mark Twain

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those that falsely believe they are free."

-Goethe

"The longer the markets disobey basic rules of valuation, the bigger the opportunity for good investors to reap the benefits. Value investing works precisely because markets become dysfunctional at times."

-John Coumarianos

Bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism, and die on euphoria. The time of maximum pessimism is the best time to buy, and the time of maximum optimism is the best time to sell.

-Sir John Templeton

"No very deep knowledge of economics is usually needed for grasping the immediate effects of a measure; but the task of economics is to foretell the remoter effects, and so to allow us to avoid such acts as attempt to remedy a present ill by sowing the seeds of a much greater ill for the future."

- Ludwig von Mises

"People only accept change in necessity and see necessity only in crisis."

-Jean Monnet

Requiring a central bank to print money to increase government's purchasing power invariably ignites a hyperinflationary firestorm. The result through history has been toppled governments and severe threats to societal stability.

- Alan Greenspan

"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."

- Henry Ford

"Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life? Or do you want to come with me and change the world?"

-Steve Jobs

"I'd be a bum on the street with a tin cup if the markets were always efficient."

-Warren Buffett

"The market can stay irrational longer than the investor can stay solvent."

- Keynes

"While the government struggles to save one crumbling enterprise at the expense of the crumbling of another, it accelerates the process of juggling debts, switching losses, piling loans on loans, mortgaging the future and the future's future. As things grow worse, the government protects itself not by contracting this process, but by expanding it."

-Ayn Rand, 1974

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

"All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits - practical, emotional, and intellectual - systemically organized for our weal or woe, and bearing us irresistibly toward our destiny, whatever the latter may be."

-William James

"Men it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."

-Charles Mackay

The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.

- Stephen Hawkings

"Give me control of a nations money supply, and I care not who makes it's laws."

- Amschel Rothchild

Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces.

- Sigmund Freud

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.